Why Do I Treat Everything Like A Military Operation?
Apparently going to the supermarket with two children requires a full tactical briefing.
I’ve realised I don’t take my children to the supermarket.
I deploy them.
Before we go in, there’s normally a briefing. We’ll be standing outside and I’ll go through exactly the same things I’ve said approximately 400 times before. Where are we going? The supermarket. And what is the supermarket not? A playground. Do we run off? No. Do we touch everything? No. What do we do if we get lost? Go to the checkout.
Excellent. Everyone understands the mission.
We enter the supermarket and within about three minutes they’re arguing over who gets to push the trolley, somebody has picked something up they have absolutely no intention of buying and one of them has wandered off to look at something despite having confirmed, moments earlier, that wandering off was specifically against operational procedure.
So the briefing is going really well.
And it’s not just the supermarket. I’ve realised I approach quite a lot of things with the children like this. Getting out of the house, the school run, shopping centres, long journeys, days out — there’s always some level of planning happening in my head before we’ve even left.
Has everyone been to the toilet? Do we have water? Snacks? Is there anything we need to take with us? What time do we need to leave? Where are we parking? Will they need something to do? Have I got everything we’ll need when somebody inevitably announces they’re starving despite having eaten twelve minutes ago?
I like to have all areas covered.
Because I know what happens when I don’t.
Someone needs a wee at the least convenient moment. Someone’s hungry. We’ve forgotten something. We end up queueing for something we could have sorted beforehand or spending money on something I could have brought from home. One tiny thing throws everything else out and suddenly what should have been fairly straightforward has become a massive pain in the arse.
I used to think this was just me being organised. Although I’m starting to wonder whether “organised” is perhaps a generous description of the woman standing outside a supermarket giving two children a pre-entry briefing.
The weird thing is, if I’m on my own, I’m completely different.
Shopping on my own is basically me time. I’ll long that shit out. I can wander around, look at things I don’t need, go back to an aisle because I’ve changed my mind about something and generally behave like a person who has nowhere else to be.
Put the children with me and suddenly we have an objective.
Get in. Get what we need. Get out.
And if Radu is with us, I’m more relaxed again. Not because the children suddenly become beautifully behaved in his presence, but because there are two of us. Two pairs of eyes. If one wanders off while the other needs something, I’m not trying to deal with both at once. If somebody needs the toilet, the entire operation doesn’t necessarily have to move with them.
Which has made me wonder whether I actually like controlling everything as much as it probably looks like I do.
Because mums get called control freaks quite easily, don’t we? We want to know what time we’re leaving. We’ve packed the snacks. We’re reminding everyone to use the toilet. We’re asking whether somebody has remembered the thing they were specifically asked to remember.
And yes, sometimes I can absolutely take it too far. If we need to be somewhere at a certain time and everyone is moving at a pace usually reserved for continental drift, I get the ump. Even when being five or ten minutes late isn’t going to cause an international incident, something in me still feels like the plan has gone wrong.
But I think there’s another side to all this organising that I hadn’t really considered before.
Thinking ahead takes energy, but so does dealing with what happens when nobody thinks ahead.
If I spend five minutes before we leave making sure everyone has water, snacks and whatever else we need, I don’t have to spend twenty minutes later finding somewhere to buy it. If everybody uses the toilet before a long journey, there is at least a fighting chance we won’t have to stop seven minutes after leaving. If I explain the supermarket rules before we go in, perhaps one of them might actually remember one of them.
Unlikely, obviously. But hope is important.
Maybe all this preparation is partly me trying to protect my energy later. I’m spending a bit of it upfront because I know chaos is more expensive.
And that feels slightly different from just being a control freak.
It also explains why I’m so much more relaxed when Radu is there. The potential consequences aren’t all mine to deal with. There’s another adult who can notice the wandering child, take someone to the toilet, sort out the problem or remember whatever I haven’t.
I don’t have to hold quite as much of the plan in my head.
But I also know there are times when I’m probably trying to protect myself from chaos that wouldn’t actually be that chaotic.
Sometimes we’re late.
Sometimes I forget the snacks and have to buy them.
Sometimes the kids piss about in the supermarket and it takes longer than I wanted.
And perhaps the bit I need to get better at isn’t becoming less organised. Being prepared genuinely does make family life easier, especially when I’m outnumbered.
Maybe it’s noticing when all that preparation is actually saving me energy and when I’m burning through it trying to make something go exactly to plan when it really doesn’t matter.
Because there’s a difference between preparing for a full day out with two small children and acting like the success of a trip to buy milk depends on everybody following orders.
I probably won’t stop doing the supermarket briefing. Mainly because despite all available evidence, I remain convinced that one day they might actually listen to it.
And I definitely won’t stop packing snacks. I’m not insane.
But perhaps I don’t need every outing to feel like a successful military campaign.
Maybe I just need to get slightly better at recognising when we’re actually under attack...
and when we’re just going to Lidl.
Leanne
How much energy are you spending trying to prevent chaos?
Sometimes planning ahead saves us energy. Sometimes trying to control every possible outcome uses more than the chaos ever would.
Plan By Energy™ is about noticing that difference and planning around the energy and capacity you actually have — rather than expecting every day to run perfectly.
Replace guilt with understanding.HerRhythm.
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